Agero Engage

To understand how the roadside experience we deliver compares to the customer experience of other roadside companies, Agero routinely does mystery shopping. This involves making actual roadside requests from various white label providers of auto insurers and vehicle manufacturers. 

More than a simple comparison, mystery shopping helps us identify flaws in the experiences offered by others in the industry, as well as providing a chance to see if our own programs are missing any opportunities to delight customers that exist in the market today.   

The competition may check the box, but are they striving for excellence? 

During an RFP process, when a company is evaluating various roadside partners, it may seem like every potential roadside player checks all or most of the boxes. However, it's in the more complex issues that you find gradients or gaps that really impact the customer experience. That's why when we mystery shop, we ask tough questions, explore the types of scenarios that may result in friction or an escalation, or in customers getting stuck in the request process and needing live support. 

When you add complexity – volume surges, weather events, atypical or hard-to-service requests, or even the need to seamlessly pass data between digital channels and live support – that's when we begin to see competitors showing friction that we've solved for. 

While consumers of non-Agero programs may be attaching high satisfaction scores to their completed jobs, we have to be more critical of these programs to uncover where minor flaws could lead to potentially serious complaints and escalations.

What we found: CX flaws and delights

Our recent round of mystery shopping had us requesting service from more than a dozen insurance and auto manufacturers supported by a variety of white label roadside companies. This effort exposed a variety of friction points in competitor experiences, as well as a few delights that we will look to double down on in our own roadside experience.

Flaws in competitors’ CX

1.  Finding and engaging with roadside programs is still challenging for many programs

All too often, client brands using competitor roadside services make the roadside request challenging to find – nesting the clickable button or phone number deep in a drop down menu on a website or app, below the fold or at the bottom of a web page or app screen, or under another heading or location – for example, “more,” “utilities,” or “services” – that isn’t intuitive to users.

2. Competitor programs are not as omnichannel as Agero

We were surprised to find an imbalance in the request channels offered by competitors, even those touting “omnichannel intake” capabilities. Traditional programs still seem to focus really heavily on phone-based intake (with limited or no access to online request channels), whereas technology companies tend to overemphasize digital and make phone numbers to make a request or reach live support nearly impossible to find. 

2a. Even if multiple intake channels exist, there were big gaps in cross channel/omnichannel integrations

All too often, when we began a request in an app or web-based form and then transferred to a live agent, we had to start over once we reached the live agent, repeating basic information about the vehicle and disablement that we’d already submitted digitally. This lack of cohesion is a significant point of friction in the customer experience, eroding trust in the support that the customer is receiving while compounding feelings of frustration during an already unfortunate vehicle event.

3. Live agents lacked basic training 

To our surprise, we encountered customer support representatives incapable of answering even basic questions without checking with a supervisor. If a customer has a hard time finding where to submit the roadside request and then they have to repeat info they already inputted when switching from a digital experience to a live agent weren’t frustrating enough, reaching a live agent that isn’t capable of providing even basic support might be enough for that customer to lose faith in a roadside program entirely. 

4. Inconsistent branding and representation of your brand

Across our mystery shopping, we found inconsistent client branding in digital channels and with live support. For example, sometimes the logos used in the brand’s app appeared differently once we began the roadside request from the branding elsewhere in the app. And some customer service reps introduced themselves as working for client brands while others didn’t; we also got inconsistent answers when we asked if the agent worked directly for the client brand. 

5. Post-intake status updates and expectation setting were not present or not updating

We found numerous examples where after initiating the request, we didn’t receive status updates confirming that a provider was dispatched or what the estimated time of arrival would be. We also encountered truck tracking experiences that didn’t load, didn’t update, or provided inaccurate ETA information. This basic expectation setting is critical for giving customers confidence that help is on the way.

Delights we encountered

1. Auto brands that do their own intake have highly skilled agents

In general, clients – notably, luxury auto brands – that handle their own intake seemed to have agents who were more consistently friendly, empathetic, and helpful than agents from vendor partner call centers. While we are tremendously proud of the strides we’ve made improving the consistency and quality of our own live support, we know there’s more work to be done.

2. EV often had its own contact channels which offered unique service and enhancements like tire purchase

We continue pursuing the art of the possible regarding EV solutions, both in terms of immediate opportunities to solve current problems and next-gen solutions in this rapidly evolving space. Our mystery shopping findings – that electric vehicle services often get routed to a dedicated support channel – affirm our idea that this segment of vehicles and drivers merit special handling and special attention.

In roadside, the details matter, especially when the going gets tough

While individual roadside consumers may not always notice subtle friction points like having to repeat information when going from a digital channel to a live agent, over the course of millions of events, even small CX hiccups or inconsistencies manifest in increased complaints, lower NPS, and other measurable negative outcomes. 

That’s why checking the box simply isn’t good enough for us at Agero. We’re always striving to deliver a best-in-class experience, and to maintain our market leadership position, we conduct rigorous data analysis and market research (like mystery shopping). This helps us identify signs of friction we can reduce or eliminate – areas we can improve to deliver even smoother experiences to each and every customer who seeks our help. 

Our job at Agero is making our clients’ customers love them more. And we can only do that by getting every detail right, one event at a time, 35,000 times a day.